If You Can Wait . . .
Perhaps there are many who have great patience. I’ve know a few. These placid souls are calm in the face of waiting. They seem impervious to the nervous energy and anxiety a prolonged wait often generates in most folks. They are those described by Rudyard Kipling’s depiction of a complete “man” in the classic poem If.
“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting.”
I can’t yet count myself among this elite group. Delays wear me out. Yet it is not just Kipling, but more importantly, the Bible, that extols the virtue of waiting. I am gradually coming to realize that extended periods when nothing we long for seems to be happening are very important to God’s agenda for us. We will only be “conformed to the image of His Son” to the extent that we are strengthened in the crucible of waiting.
The virtues of waiting on the Lord are mentioned over 50 times in the Old Testament, mostly in Psalms and several of the prophets (e.g. prominently in Isaiah). Jesus gives several parables related to how we should wait for the coming Kingdom. And a number of the epistles raise the value of the wait. In addition, delay characterizes much of the history of Israel. Though at times we see God immediately answering prayers, more often in the annals of God’s holy history, long periods of silence stretch out after the initial petition.
In the past, my reading of Scripture and the stories of great men and women from the past has focused on the periods of activity. I have paid attention to how God acted in the lives of His followers – how He rescued them or raised them to positions of great influence. But due to my own life circumstances, I’ve begun to pay more attention to the periods of silence. Those times in which nothing seems to be happening. The apparent absence of God.
Why does God do this? Why, when His people often need Him most, does He delay? Why wait?
While there are as many answers to these questions as there are circumstances, and while I don’t pretend to know those answers, at some universal level, I do believe God values waiting because He values faith. Hebrews 11:6 indicates that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” And where is faith most likely to be found? In the wait.
It seems to me that waiting is to faith what running is to a footrace. A track race cannot exist without athletes running. The race is not the finish line, or the starting line, or the venue, though these may all be minor components. It is fundamentally the running that makes a race. Without that activity, there is no race. In the same way, faith does not exist without waiting. It is only hypothetical until the period of delayed expectation is upon us. Until we are called upon to wait with confidence and hope, faith is just a concept with no reality.
Marathoners and other distance runners are unlikely to come close to completing the course of a crucial competition without extensive training. While nutrition, proper equipment, and mental preparation are important, nothing compares to the necessity of the regular discipline of roadwork. It is only by regularly running at increasing intervals that the runner is prepared for the grueling final competition. Without such training, weakness and fatigue will overcome the athlete early in the race.
So here’s my hypothesis. Our faith is strengthened and made robust through waiting on God. This is both the training ground and the competition venue of the follower of Christ. When we are tempted to fidget, worry, and complain about God’s delays, choose instead to rejoice. Remember Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV).
Those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.